Kees Kaan to speak at INDESEM 2019 lecture series

On Monday, 13 May 2019, Kees Kaan will give a public lecture and participate in a discussion at INDESEM 2019, taking place at 17.40 h in the Orange Hall of the TU Delft Faculty of Architecture and Built Environment.

INDESEM, International Design Seminar, is a biennial event with lectures, excursions, debates and a workshop, all organised around a specific theme. This year’s theme, Beyond the Echo Chamber, focuses on how to position yourself as an architect in our rapidly changing, (digitally) connected society. Adhering to the seminar theme, Kaan will give his insight on the scope of an architect’s work and how it transforms with each project. After the lecture he will engage in a discussion with moderator Salomon Frausto and architect Alun Jones (Dow Jones Architects).

For more information follow the link or check out the programme in the PDF below.

In anticipation of the LifeCycles festival in Ghent this September, a three day live-streamed series of panel discussions will be held from May 26-28 in partnership with ArchDaily, featuring architects from around the world who will be sharing their ideas and experiences for how we can build a better future.

Dikkie Scipio of KAAN Architecten will participate in the round table discussion on 28 May. Along with Eran Chen (ODA) and Kim H. Nielsen (3XN) she will discuss the future of cities and its crossover with construction.

LifeCycles festival of inspiration and innovation, focused on architecture, project and city development is taking place from 23-25 September in Ghent. Dikkie Scipio joins a selection of forward-thinking innovators and experts who will be presenting their experience and insights, with the aim of setting the agenda for the future.

The curated program is built around 6 topics connected to meeting future challenges of our cities, architecture, building industry, technology, environment and communities.

In her own words, Scipio reflects: “In our urge to save the planet we are tempted to think about buildings like puzzles with little pieces that can be constructed and deconstructed as quickly and easily as it sounds. Little pieces that can be reused in their original state or decomposed to basic commodities in a process that doesn’t increase waste or pollution. However sympathetic this may sound, it also implies an expected devaluation and acceptance of the building’s short-term lifespan. This surrender to a fast consumer economy contrasts the intrinsic quality of architecture: the quality of shaped space, guided light, well-chosen and placed materials. It is this quality that outlives trends and even function. Quality that lasts is always preferable over destruction, even when that destruction is called sustainable.”

As a professor of Architectural Design at the Münster School of Architecture, and in collaboration with KAAN Architecten, Dikkie Scipio launched a survey, focused on how current living conditions accommodate people’s activities during forced isolation.

In light of recent demands in contemporary living, our homes need to facilitate a far more different lifestyle than the one they were initially designed for. Aptly titled ‘Your home is your shelter’, the research aims to provide insight on how people use their homes, as well as how to adjust or design better ones in the future.

You are invited to participate by filling out a simple questionnaire here.

The biennial edition of the Architecture Prize Almere has started again, honoring the architectural achievements built within the city’s municipal boundaries between September 2018 and January 2020.

This year an all-female professional jury has been appointed, including KAAN Architecten founding partner Dikkie Scipio, journalist Tracy Metz and landscape architect Ivonne de Nood.

The APA 2020 is being organized by Kunstlinie Almere Flevoland and serves to highlight achievements of exceptional quality, and make the local architectural production visible to a large audience. The winners of this year’s edition will be announced on the national Day of Architecture in June.

This Thursday, 23 January, Vincent Panhuysen will join the Finnish Architectural and Concrete Conference in Helsinki as a keynote speaker. His lecture will cover recent works of KAAN Architecten, with an emphasis on projects with public programme, challenging context and diverse users.

The conference is organized by the Concrete Industry Association to discuss the changing environment and the importance of concrete as a material for the future. In connection with the seminar, Concrete Structure of the Year 2019 will be announced.

For more information on the event programme, visit the link here. (Finnish only)

NY Midtown Graduation Studio of Complex Projects continued their research with a week long field trip to New York packed with site visits, workshops and lectures.

The group made their first impressions after a general site tour, followed by a brief lecture on the office and selected projects by ShoP architects founding partner, Corie D. Sharples.

In the following days, students presented their work in combined sessions at Columbia GSAPP. Through discussions about the Midtown, both Delft and Columbia students gained useful local insight from guest critics including Eran Chan and Juan Roque Urrutia of ODA. Additionally, the group explored the mid-Manhattan library project with a tour by Mecanooassociate Jasper Tonk and visited the latest projects of Diller Scofidio + Renfro – The Shed and the New MoMA.

Stemming from the week long field trip, students will have developed a good spatial understanding of the city, in order to formulate clear conclusions, reflect and build towards their thesis topics. By a critical examination of New York’s Midtown, the studio aims to eliminate the traditional and perhaps linear processes of planning, urban design, and architecture.

The graduation studio consists of both individual and group work, focusing on different research topics tested on the same site. The students will need to develop a vision, a design scenario for the site, rendered by the individual project interventions. Keep updated on the activities of the studio here.

On Wednesday, 25 September, Vincent Panhuysen will give a lecture at the School of Architecture and Design at Lebanese American University in Byblos, Lebanon.

Research, experiments and, above all, dialogue with stakeholders are essential in developing a proper building. The architect can direct this intensive process based on a strong narrative and imaginative power. Vincent Panhuysen’s lecture will revisit five different works by KAAN Architecten demonstrating the application of this process both in conception as well as the implementation of the design.

Nearly two year long collaboration between the Chair of Complex Projects, Amsterdam Institute for Advanced Metropolitan Solutions and the municipality of Amsterdam, culminated yesterday in a launch of the AMSTERDAM 2050 book at We Make The City festival.

Introduction of the book by Kees Kaan, as the Head of the Chair, was followed by a panel discussion with city representatives and a guided tour of the AMS Mid-City models.

Complex Projects teamed up for almost two years with Amsterdam Institute for Advanced Metropolitan Solutions and the municipality of Amsterdam, to focus on the theme AMSTERDAM 2050. The book is a systematization of the work of more than 80 graduate students and 6 tutors with the input from researchers and invited critics on a case study on 9 different locations in Amsterdam.

The research-through-design process of documenting and analysing the present urban conditions of the City of Amsterdam and investigating various trends directing future urban development resulted in design solutions and visualisations of the predicted development of these locations.

By using Amsterdam as a living laboratory, graduate students, researchers and teachers of the architectural design chair of Complex Projects at the Department of Architecture at TU Delft Faculty of Architecture and the Built Environment have been interested in seeing how ‘growth’ and rapid ‘changes’ – growth of numbers of inhabitants and tourists, and change of energy, mobility, health and leisure concepts – will affect the City of Amsterdam on a time horizon 2050.

How can innovations be introduced to the domain of architecture and urban design? The creative exploration presented in this publication aims to understand today’s structure of the City, to explore possible future scenarios and to speculate on new architectural typologies new technology and ways of living may construct.

Oscillating somewhere between art, engineering and entrepreneurship, architectural profession has always been difficult to categorise. Even within the institutions that provide architectural education, there is a systematic difference in opinion and, consequently, the focus of the curriculum.

In her latest column for Fleur Groenendijk Foundation, Dikkie Scipio explains the workings of the architecture education system in The Netherlands and how in 2015 it brought about the BEP (Professional Traineeship approved by the Register of Architects). This marked a tectonic shift in acquiring the title of ‘the architect’, impacting the career trajectories of architecture school graduates.

Promoting young architects has been a sole focus for Scipio, who is in her fifth year of serving as a board member of Fleur Groenendijk Foundation. In an interviewearlier this year, she explained that aside from graduating with top marks, the success of every young architect relies heavily on being recognised and embraced by potential customers or employers. To that effect, with initiatives like De Meester, she seeks to highlight the work of recent graduates that shows social and contextual relevance, craftsmanship, and a clear vision.